Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!samsung!emory!hubcap!Eugene
From: eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene Miya)
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: A couple more books (mention, not endorsement)
Message-ID: <7360@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 7 Dec 89 00:43:09 GMT
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Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu

A couple of other books I have looked at (note the first was
given away for free, I was told because volume 2 is nearing).
Mention here does not constitute endorsement.

%A Geoffrey C. Fox
%A Mark A. Johnson
%A Gregory Lyzenga
%A Steve W. Otto
%A John Salmon
%A David Walker
%Z Caltech
%T Solving Problems on Concurrent Processors
%V 1, General Techniques and Regular Problems
%I Prentice-Hall
%C Englewood Cliffs, NJ
%D 1988
%K book, text, hypercubes, CCCP, MIMD, parallel programming,
communication, applications, physics,
%X Interesting book.  Given out for free at Supercomputing'89.
 >>>This is why one should attend   ==== conferences

%A G. Jack Lipovski
%A Miroslaw Malek
%T Parallel Computing: Theory and Comparisons
%I Wiley-Interscience
%C New York
%D 1987
%K computational energy and efficiency,
%X The long awaited book on the Texas Reconfigurable Array.
It is a bit disappointing (not even a photograph), and the diagrams are not
completely clear.  The meat of the subject does not enter until late.
The concept of inductive computing is interesting.  Very little about
TRACOS, CSL, or other software related issues.
The appendices are a collection of previously published papers:
PASM, Ultracomputer, IBM RP3, Cedar, Cosmic Cube, CHiP, non-Von.
[See below for one example.]
There is a very nice paper on the problem of scaling.  The majority of
the books is about interconnection networks (not parallel computing).

%A David Elliot Shaw
%T Organization and Operation of a Massively Parallel Machine
%E Guy Rabbat
%B Advance Semiconduction Technology and Computer System
%I Van Nostrand Reinhold Company
%D 1987
%X
Reproduced in "Parallel Computing: Theory and Comparisons,"
by G. Jack Lipovski and Miroslaw Malek,
Wiley-Interscience, New York, 1987, pp. 335-366, appendix G.

Also I mentioned

%A Edward Gehringer
%A Daniel P. Siewiorek
%A Zary Segall
%Z CMU
%T Parallel Processing: The Cm* Experience
%I Digital Press
%C Boston, MA
%D 1987
%K Book,
%$ 42
%X Looks okay!
%X [Extract from inside front cover]
... a comprehensive report of the important parallel-processing
research carried out on Cm* at Carnegie-Mellon University. Cm* is a
multiprocessing system consisting of 50 tightly coupled processors and
has been in operation since the mid-1970s. Two operating
systems-StarOs and Medusa-are part of its development, along with a
vast number of applications.


Additionally, I have received other recommendations for books.
I can't confirm them in some cases, because I do not have copies.
(I too get publisher's copies, but "Highly Parallel Computing"
is the best I've seen so far, and I found yet another error
last evening in it.)  It's preference.  All of these books should
at least be available on reserve in a library for students to
check.  I will also gladily accept annotations (flames pro and con,
a couple of dataflow versus "control-flow" entries in the bib are
this way) for any parallel processing book or article and cat-bib them
to their respective entries.  New books, we'll take any time, but
endorsements will be measured.

You can lookbib for words like text, or book, or textbook in the bib.
The bottom line is yes there are a whole slew of books on parallel
computing out there.  Beware of buying them for out of date
architectures like the HEP book (MIT Press), or the Illiac IV (Hord)
etc. unless its for a library and then to be placed on reserve.
That is the problem of books which become obsolete.

--eugene miya
  Gross generalizer
  You should know where.